Review: From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism, Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History, by Robert Chazan

Abstract

Robert Chazan, From Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism, Ancient and Medieval Christian Constructions of Jewish History . Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 253 + xvi pp. ISBN 9781107152465. $30.99 (paperback). At the Council of Clermont in November 1095 Pope Urban II called the west to war. His speech was acerbic and vitriolic, religiously charged and filled with the alleged horrors suffered by Christians living in the east. It evoked in his audience a zeal and spirit that would be seen by later generations as the crusading ideal. However, it also exposed inherent political fragility, and deep seated racial biases, amongst elements of his audience, and upon those who took up the cross in the name of Christ. From April to July in 1096 the Ashkenazic Jews of Speyer, Worms and Mainz were targeted by elements of these Christian forces, facing either forced conversion or death. It is worryingly easy to see anti-Jewish sentiment in the central and later Middle Ages. But it is not enough simply to accept it, nor is it appropriate to simply see in medieval Christianity a consistent core of what would become anti-Semitism. The reality is of course much more complex and shifting than such a generalized image would dictate. Those in the People's Crusade who attacked these Jewish communities were engaging with Christian rhetoric and teaching, but also were exposing inherent social and political fear and resentment. Those who were attacked turned to one another for help, but also looked to episcopal authority to curb the horrific violence of the armed pilgrims and the local townsfolk who stood with them. A study that links the origins of anti-Jewish Christian sentiment to the manifestation of anti-Semitism in the modern period is both welcome and necessary. Robert Chazan asks challenging …